The latest effort to define news – specifically as it relates to BBC Radio 5 Live – comes from the BBC Trust. As it welcomes Lord Patten as its new chairman next week, the trust has launched a service review of Radio 5 Live and 5 Live Sports Extra. One of the objectives is to follow up the trust's recent ruling that a complaint from TalkSport raised "significant and valid questions" about the breadth of the output which Radio 5 Live counts towards its annual 75% news quota.

Some of my former BBC colleagues may lean back in their chairs whilst reading this, cast their eyes at the ceiling and mutter "here we go again". But I would urge them not to make the mistake of thinking that these are merely ramblings from an obsessed commercial competitor. They are not.

Radio 5 Live is a great station, and I'm very proud of being part of its history. Part of the value associated with the licence fee is that at its best, the BBC can provide a framework for all to flourish. It is in this spirit that I pass comment.

Over a pint, a former senior BBC colleague asked: "Moz, is TalkSport becoming more like 5 Live?" My reply was: "No, my friend, 5 Live is becoming more like TalkSport." There was a weary nod acknowledging the point in reply. The debate about the type of news service offered by Radio 5 Live is not simply an external discussion, it's a very real internal debate about the station's responsibility to licence fee payers.

So I ask the question: are interviews with TV stars, a presenter anecdote about a promise made under the influence of alcohol and a football phone-in suggesting that Millwall be banned from FA Cup, the job of a BBC news channel with an annual budget of £72m? Is Radio 5 Live even a news channel?

Depending on who you talk to, Radio 5 Live is a news channel, a sports channel, a talk service or a populist speech channel. A unique offering for licence fee payers? Or a channel that reacts to the commercial sector and chases audience?

The split personality of Radio 5 Live creates a challenge for BBC management. As its managing editor along with the then controller Bob Shennan, for whom I have huge respect, I had to juggle colleagues in BBC News and BBC Sport who often had conflicting but equally compelling ideas about editorial. I like to think that most of the time we got it right.

Since then things have changed again, as it's right that they should. The question is, have these changes strengthened Radio 5 Live's news offering within a crowded radio market?

Last week research commissioned by TalkSport from BritainThinks suggested they have not. Listeners on average estimated news represented just 38% of Radio 5 Live's output, and that the amount of football and lighter news had increased. A significant proportion of listeners thought Radio 5 Live should be covering more serious news and a wider range of sports.

Radio 5 Live was created in response to a particular moment. Its genesis lay in Radio 4 News FM – a rolling news station which operated during the first Gulf war. The present day Radio 5 Live is a very different service to the one the BBC governors sanctioned in the early 1990s, with different incarnations reacting to the environment of the times. We are now in another new time, another new age where the service has to look at itself again.

Whilst driving across the country the other night my passengers and I scanned the dial for news of what was happening in the Arab world after a heated debate on the subject. Two national radio stations were competing with sports output (one of them being TalkSport ), there was classical music to soothe the soul, specialist music shows, local radio, an interesting documentary, but nowhere could we find a real time national news service.

Radio 5 Live has a unique opportunity to take that ground, to take news more seriously and grow a broader radio audience for the BBC's world-class journalism.

The BBC Trust has ruled that the BBC needs "a more nuanced method of monitoring the proportion of news output on 5 Live", promising to use its service review to establish what should constitute news output on the station. For Radio 5 Live, this isn't a threat, it's an opportunity.

Moz Dee is programme director of TalkSport and a former managing editor of BBC Radio 5 Live